Tom Cruise in Talks for All You Need is Kill

Looks like Warner Bros. is keen on getting Tom Cruise to front their big-budget sci-fi action film “All You Need is Kill”, based on the novel by Hiroshi Sakurazaka.

Previous reports had Doug Liman attached to direct the project, but that was back in 2010, and as we all know, in Hollywood directors and stars drop in and out of movie projects the way they date — unless the project gets fast-tracked, involvements are subject to the next pretty face showing up. And last we heard, Liman had already attached himself to direct yet another sci-fi movie about the moon.

In any case, Cruise would certainly fill the shoes needed for a project like “All You Need is Kill” (which THR says has been retitled “We Mortals Are”, which, frankly, is just as bad a title as the original one). The film is set in the near future, and features an ongoing, brutal battle between alien invaders and the human race. The hero is a young, novice recruit who gets killed in his very first engagement with the enemy — only to repeat the day, “Groundhog Day” style. As he fights, dies, and relives the same day over and over again, our green recruit begins to grow into a fierce soldier, eventually becoming a battle-hardened warrior.

If he signs on, this would be Cruise’s second big-budget sci-fi movie, counting his role in “Tron: Legacy” director Joseph Kosinski’s “Horizons”, which is currently in development with Cruise in the lead and also for Warner Bros.